Their response was impressive: Three double-digit winning streaks, a first in league history. Sixty-seven wins, fifth-best in league history. Dirk Nowitzki putting up the numbers and leadership that would make him the team's first MVP winner.

Then, poof! The Mavs threw it all away again, finding an even more humiliating way to lose - in the first round to a Golden State team that needed a huge push just to scrape its way into the playoffs. By many measures, it ranks as one of the most colossal upsets in all of pro sports, making Nowitzki's honor feel a bit hollow and leaving them with a long summer to stew over their twin failures.

Now what?

Associated Press

Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki (41), of Germany, drives to the basket between Chicago Bulls centers Aaron Gray (34) and Ben Wallace (3) in the first half of a preseason basketball game, in this Oct. 23, 2007 photo, in Dallas.

How does a team overcome such demoralizing oustings in consecutive postseasons?

And how do they tolerate the 82-game precursor known as the regular season before they can get back to their proving ground?

The answers will come not from their billionaire owner or their German superstar, but in the Cajun twang of their coach, Avery Johnson, aka "The Little General."

For starters, he's already gotten everyone to believe the Warriors series was just something that happened.

Players are almost unanimous in their dismissal of it as being trapped in a perfect storm - a streaking team against one that had been cruising into the playoffs, a bad matchup on top of that and whatever inside knowledge former coach Don Nelson shared with the Warriors. Jerry Stackhouse went so far as to say the Mavs were lucky to have stretched the series to six games.

To Johnson, the disheartening part wasn't losing that series, it was failing to get back to the finals.

"I wouldn't have been any happier had we won the first round and lost to Utah," Johnson said, referring to what the Warriors did in the second round.

Nowitzki believes the best approach is to "keep it fresh in your mind, but try to focus on the future."

In their annual survey, only 15 percent picked the Mavs to win it all.

Such low expectations actually are helping the Mavericks' mind-set. With the division rival Spurs once again the reigning champs and teams like the Suns, Celtics and Cavaliers drawing more attention this preseason, Nowitzki described Dallas as being in "the underdog role."